i am seeking, i am striving, i am in it with all my heart. -vincent van gogh

Treat Me Nice(ly)

“Say hello all over again. Romance me, take me back to the beginning.”

-Deer Tick

I keep having realities far better than anything I could ever dream up. Before this one escapes my memory, I must catalog it here.

The promise of summer holds so much within its anticipation. Longer nights painted with steely skies and stars that echo all the dreams inside your rib cage you want to set free. If I didn’t adore the sun so ardently, I would say that summer nights are my favorite gift of the season.

I met him last year in absolutely un-lyrical circumstances, but, as “the times they are a’changin'”, so must our meet-cutes. As I am want to do, I became enamored rather quickly.He built things with his own two hands, and grew things like vegetables and beards, and was far wittier than I. And, perhaps the most compelling of all- underneath all that unequivocal man-ness, beat a heart of which I found a most alluring likeness to mine. We walked different paths, very different ones. But it seemed as though some of the blossoms along my path were the same ones that bloomed along his. So, for a little while, we gathered those and they created something like Walt Whitman would have written. It didn’t stay, as our two paths wouldn’t allow for that. But I always enjoyed my time spent in his company.

A few weeks ago, I saw him again. Sometimes, we human beings are generous with our memories of those we once knew quite well but who have since become versions of strangers as paths part and Time’s chords strike on. And then, when you meet again, you find that your memory has conceived them more as perfectly affected instruments of your reveries rather than the real, flawed, human beings they are (which, for the record, don’t lend themselves well to idyllic constructions of our past). Whenever this happens to me, it is a sobering kind of thing. I can’t help but feel as if I’ve lost something. This time, though, my memory gifted no virtues that were not deserved, for it could not have fashioned him any better than what he wholly and tangibly was. I think the dormant butterflies in those blossoms we shared a year ago were awakened; I felt their wings flutter inside my belly and make me feel indebted to be a girl. I’m not quite sure if he had changed or if I had changed, or if we both had, but the air surrounding us was different.

I rarely find or make occasion to stay up late anymore, as I have become quite fond of the soft simplicity of sleep, but that night the entreating outside and his company were far more appealing to me than any luxury slumber could grant me. We sat and marveled at the moon, and talked about the remarkable expansiveness of life. (It sounds deeper than it was.) My feet were cold and he warmed them. And I remembered how exquisite it is to be a girl when you have a good man beside you, warming your blood and teaching you things you never knew you always wanted to know.

The quiet morning persisted, and he said he would go, so that I could get some sleep. As coyly as I could feign without inherent coquetry (i.e. batting eyelashes) betraying me, I told him that I needed him to kiss me first. And just like music, he put my face in his hands, and he did just that. And my perseverant eyelashes were granted repose as I closed my eyes and lived inside of those kisses. He said goodnight and goodbye, and I left the outside and crawled in to greet my slumber with warm feet and smiles in my bloodstream. Before I closed my eyes for good that night, I read his parting words: “You are very lovely. The waxing moon agrees.” And I will live off of that, I think, for long after summer’s gifts have waned.